


To Die a Small, Silent Death

by Nihstel



Series: This Is How It Starts [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe- Mutants, Gen, Metallokinesis, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 18:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihstel/pseuds/Nihstel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Metallokinesis: the ability to manipulate metal and metallic substances.</p><p>And so it starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Die a Small, Silent Death

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: all characters belong to Marvel. I own nothing and am making no profits from the work below.

Howard Stark starts in New York, screaming at the top of his lungs. His father laughs; his mom smiles and his eyes are bright enough to blind. When they darken to brown, their color swallows people whole.  
  
At two, he’s talking too much and too fast and he’s always playing with metal. He grows, the metal starts singing with words he can’t catch, and he smiles for the camera’s because his father is hot on the markets, still small, but Howard knows, 10 and old, he’s going to make them big. He never does tell his father about how metal bends if he wants it too, and then its too late when he dies of a heart attack aged 50, and 28 is old enough to take over a company.  
  
He was right. He make’s them huge.  
  
The metal whispers, sings like a bird, every scrap reaching for him, the world is never silent and he likes it that way. Weapons better than anything before come from his factories, and the government begs at his door. Paparazzi flash their lights. His parties light the sky and drinking is a fun little game. He looks to the dark side of the law with a man named Obadiah Stane and they shake hands on black deals.  
  
He meets a girl named Maria and, later, the wedding ring he gives her is titanium.  
  
But that’s in the future. Now he’s cleaning up in Europe and Korea and Vietnam, and looking for the young man they’d staked their hopes on in the war. The soldier had been big and innocent and made from the hopes of the Americans, and he’d asked if was going to die, and smiled when he said, _I live to serve. ___  
  
Howard swore to show the soldier the rest of world, but the soldier vanished in water too cold to let him live and Howard can never find him, though he looks and looks and looks. In the meantime he keeps making weapons, makes some that can keep and collar mutants like him and he feels a little pride for being indispensible.  
  
Even as he’s climbing up, he’s reaching down with Obadiah on his shoulder.  
  
50 and the king of the world.  
  
He walks in his study, a coat on his arm, water plastered to his forehead and dripping on the carpet, and there’s a woman waiting, sitting in his chair, and she’s not his wife. His gun is in the drawer- except its not anymore because it’s in her fingers but he’s never needed a gun before. He reaches for the room, metal’s everywhere, he designed it that way because of a legacy called Merchant of Death and paranoia is a lifestyle choice.  
  
But she’s suddenly in his face and he pulls back and pulls. Her fingers go around his throat and when she whispers, “you don’t deserve it”, his head explodes.  
  
The woman dies with a candlestick through her spine.  
  
The world goes utterly, completely, silent-  
  
-except that’s Maria singing downstairs.  
  
There’s no way to fix it and he’s knows its relief on their faces when the government doctors tell him this, because who wants a freak as your arms manufacturer? He screams at them and ignores it when the phone rings and downs a glass, a bottle, a case-  
  
Maria gives birth in a hospital without him and Anthony’s eyes are the blue of a star. They darken to something like the mud of the Nile, life trapped in irises. When he smiles the world breathes in.  
  
(She never forgives him)  
  
Howard throws himself into his work, cuts his fingers on things that shouldn’t hurt, waiting, waiting desperately for the time when the world gets noisy again, because he’s drowning in the silence.  
  
It never does.  
  
Howard finds his son can’t speak to any metal, not in any of the years he asks, though he used to say he would learn, Daddy, promise! Now he just shakes his head every time Howard asks and runs a finger down the strut of a robot he’s building. He can’t hear the metal, it’s a failure of genetics, and so Howard doesn’t bother anymore.  
  
(Anthony smiles into paparazzi bulbs and laughs in the right places. He’s smarter than Howard ever was. His eyes have turned to pebbles).  
  
He was a genius before he heard the metal, but the drive’s gone, and he can’t breathe. Sometimes he thinks there’s a shadow in the door to his lab but he never looks.  
  
Howard stops making anything, burns out like a bulb and leaves the company he made so big. What’s money matter when he could use his time to find a cure for the silence?  
  
Maria yells at him.  
  
Anthony doesn’t say a word and no one can remember the last time they saw his eyes.  
  
He gets himself a drink. Returns to his lab  
  
Obadiah calls, but Howard lets the phone ring, and ring, and ring.  
  
So it goes, life tearing through his fingers, bleeding out under the lights of the lab, until he and Maria die in a car crash from brake failure and under suspicions he was drunk. It’s fast for one of them, and the other screams as the fire burns.  
  
The news splashes headlines for days, than they’re forgotten like last week’s rain, and they leave behind a son who walks away to never come back.

**Author's Note:**

> I have never seen Captain America: The First Avenger so all my knowledge of Howard comes from the Iron Man movies, fan fic, fan discussions, and a small exposure to comics. 
> 
> Please comment! I'll give cookies. The other parts to this series should be posted soon (they're all done) but this is the trial run, so I can change anything grievously wrong. I don't have a beta so If anyone wants to volunteer there's four works left in this series.


End file.
